Reading Features Accomplished Poet Scott Cairns

Scott Cairns, director of the University of Missouri’s Creative Writing Program and Center for the Literary Arts, will read his poetry Wednesday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. in Westmont’s Hieronymus Lounge at Kerrwood Hall. The reading is free and open to the public.

Cairns, who earned a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, has written many published books, including “Compass of Affection: New and Selected Poems,” “The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain,” “Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven—A Pilgrimage” and “Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life.”

“The ponderous and powerful manner in which he reads his poems aloud has influenced me greatly,” says Paul Willis, Santa Barbara poet laureate and Westmont English professor. “He has a way of holding up each word in turn for the listener’s pleasure and inspection.”

Cairns’ poems and essays have been selected for Best Spiritual Writing and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Spirituality and Health, The Christian Century and Western Humanities Review.

Willis says that Cairns is probably the pre-eminent Christian poet in the U.S. “He is both a Christian who is an accomplished poet and a poet who often writes about matters of Christian faith,” Willis says. “He manages to be whimsical and very deeply serious at the same time. He is well read in the early church fathers and references them in interesting and provocative ways. At the same time, he is very attentive to the daily challenges of living out a life of faith here, now.”

Cairns is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he was mentored by Annie Dillard. He then earned a master’s degree at Hollins College and a Master of Fine Arts degree at Bowling Green State University before earning a doctorate at the University of Utah. He has also taught at Kansas State University, Westminster College, University of North Texas and Old Dominion University.